I SAW THE LIGHT, MILES AHEAD, BORN TO BE BLUE - Reviews By Greg Klymkiw - Why so many music Biopics all of a sudden? 3 movies about 3 musicians released within 2 months. Go figure.

Top: I SAW THE LIGHT ***
Bottom right: MILES AHEAD **
Bottom left: BORN TO BE BLUE *

Born to Be Blue (2015)
Dir. Robert Budreau
Starring: Ethan Hawke, Carmen Ejogo, Callum Keith Rennie,
Stephen McHattie, Janet-Laine Green, Dan Lett, Kevin Hanchard, Tony Nappo

Review By Greg Klymkiw

If you've seen Let's Get Lost, Bruce Weber's haunting 1988 feature-length documentary about the sad, sexy, tragic genius Chet Baker, there's no reason to see Robert Budreau's dreadful biopic misfire Born to Be Blue. Weber's documentary succeeds because it harrowingly focuses on Baker's drug addiction as much as his turbulent life and extraordinary music. Rather than obviously charting tried-and-true rise-and-fall beats in Baker's life, we get subtle glimpses into just how Baker's demons were as much a part of his art as they were what ultimately destroyed him.

Born to Be Blue is a fruit-loopy, simple-minded fantasia on Chet getting his musical mojo back after having his teeth knocked out by some scumbag dealers. Writer-Director Robert Budreau's film reduces Baker's life to some kind of Brian Grazer-like "winner" story dappled with plenty of fake dark touches. Amalgamating all of Baker's wives into one convenient punching bag/inspiration (Carmen Ejogo) feels horribly by-the-numbers and on-point.

Hello, my name is Ethan Hawke.
I can be tortured, eh. Just like Chet Baker.

I'll concede the film could not have possibly shoehorned Baker's whole existence into ninety-or-so minutes, but why it felt the need to concoct so much nonsense and avoid even a smattering or pie-slice of the man's genuiely fascinating life as a microcosm of the whole, is beyond me.

Ethan Hawke is a fine actor when he's in good movies, but he seems to take on a lot of garbage. He must know when it's crap, but sometimes, how's a fella to really know? I'm sure he thought the role in Born to Be Blue would have been a supreme challenge and maybe even Oscar bait, but aside from bearing an occasional resemblance to Baker, his performance is never more than skin-deep. We see no demons in Hawke. All we experience is an actor pretending that they're there and working overtime to prove it.

Most of all, though, Baker is presented as a man on the road to self-discovery, hence "success". Neither the film nor Hawke let us forget it. Give me a break.

Skip this. Just watch Let's Get Lost again.

Born to Be Blue is an IFC Films picture in very limited theatrical release.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: * One-Star

Shaft? Superfly? Nope. Don Cheadle as Miles Davis.

Miles Ahead(2015)
Dir. Don Cheadle
Scr. Steven Baigelman & Cheadle
Starring: Don Cheadle, Ewan McGregor, Emayatzy Corineald

Review By Greg Klymkiw

As jazz legend Miles Davis, there's no denying Don Cheadle's charismatic work as an actor. Veering from the afro-and-shades-adorned 70s cocaine addict to the suave, dapper young man in the 50s flashbacks, Cheadle is never less than engaging and his performance comes close to capturing the genius of this great musical artist.

Unfortunately, we have to put up with the film. Reducing the 70s Davis to some kind of participant in a lame, TV-movie version of a Blaxploitation programmer, then clumsily flashing us back to Davis's loving, but ultimately abusive treatment towards his wife (Emayatzy Corineald), the picture is all over the place and rife with dullsville cliches.

STARSKY and HUTCH? Nope!
The Miles Davis Story as Cop TV show
melded with supremely lame 70s Blaxploitation.

Worse yet, we have to put up with the increasingly insufferable Ewan McGregor. Here he plays a scruffy freelance writer pretending to be a Rolling Stone journalist. Far too much of the movie is Cheadle and McGregor verbally jousting, and not too convincingly at that. What really begins to pale, though, is an endless subplot involving the disappearance of Davis's master tapes to his new album and McGregor helping him retrieve them. The whole movie turns into an endless episode of "Starsky and Hutch", replete with a supremely lame car chase and gunplay action.

Cheadle's direction is, at best, mildly competent and at its worst, barely competent. That said, his performance, especially during his coked-up crazy-ass scenes, is never less than a blast. There was probably a terrific movie with Cheadle as Miles Davis - somewhere out there. Miles Ahead, sadly, is not it.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: ** Two Stars

Miles Ahead is currently in theatrical release via Mongrel Media.

Tom Hiddleston as fine a Hank Williams
as Gary Busey's Buddy Holly was.

I Saw the Light (2015)
Dir. Marc Abraham
Starring: Tom Hiddleston, Elizabeth Olsen, Maddie Hasson

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Marc Abraham's Hank Williams biopic might not go too far beneath the surface, but it hits key points in the life of the famed post-war American country crooner with a spate of lovely performances and an evocative attention to period detail. With only enough manipulation of the facts and compression of the events to make approximately 10+ years of Williams's life pass by amiably and entertainingly in a surprisingly breezy 123 minutes, this is by far the best of the recent trio of musical biopics.

Abraham's screenplay for I Saw the Light is based upon the book “Hank Williams: The Biography” by Colin Escott, George Merritt and William Macewen and as such, it seems less concerned with exploring the ennui which contributed to the singer's unique renderings of hits like the title track, “Why Don’t You Love Me,” "Move it on Over" and among others, “Lovesick Blues”, as it is with charting key events in Williams's life. We go from his romance and marriage to first wife Audrey (Elizabeth Olsen), when he was a local radio performer and follow him on his endless gigs in smoky honky-tonks until he eventually achieves the necessary chops to headline at Nashville's "Grand Ole Opry".

The story doesn't shy away from his Jekyll and Hyde-like transformations from kind, loving and charming to mean-spirited, hard-drinking and philandering. He's both a good father and a negligent father. He's as caring as he is violent. As he rises to the top, we see him abandon his first wife (who insisted too strongly upon performing with him - her voice was, at best, spiritedly competent and at its worst, bordering on caterwauling) and eventually settling down with second wife, Billie Jean Jones (Maddie Hasson).

Husband and Wife Duet
One Sings, The Other Doesn't

Abraham lets the narrative plane touch down on Hank's squabbles with the record company and promoters, his debilitating back pain and his eventual reliance upon highly addictive painkillers. A good chunk of the film is imbued with a pleasing sentiment and basks in the warm glow of Dante Spinotti's gorgeous cinematography.

The real star of the picture is the music. Leading man Tom Hiddleston (Loki in the Thor movies) is nothing less than compelling when voicing Williams's work and much of the running time is pleasingly toe-tapping. If anything, I Saw the Light shares a great deal with Steve Rash's Buddy Holly biopic with Gary Busey - it's old fashioned and goes down easy.

The picture's like a nice, mellow moonshine. It cuts through the dust in the throat, clears the pipes, the senses, the raw emotions and finally keeps us glued to the proceedings just long enough to leave the cinema satisfied, but also compelled to whip out our own vinyl and CDs of Hank's music, so we can keep our toes a tapping and the tears a flowing.

THE FILM CORNER RATING: *** 3-Stars

I Saw the Light is in national release via Mongrel Media.

Greg Klymkiw's 10 BEST HORROR/SCI-FI/FANTASY/ACTION FILMS of 2014 - Many of these films were first unleashed at such film festivals and venues as TIFF 2014, TIFF Bell Lightbox, Hot Docs 2014, Toronto After Dark 2014, FantAsia 2014, FNC 2014, BITS 2014, NIFF 2014, The Royal Cinema and the Magic Lantern Carlton Cinemas

Berkshire County
Dir. Audrey Cummings, Scr. Chris Gamble, Prod. A71 Productions, High Star Entertainment, Narrow Edge Productions
Pigs, you see, are lurking in the woods. Not just any pigs, mind you, but a family of travelling serial killers adorned in horrifying pig masks. And these sick fuckers mean business.

COLD IN JULY - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Jim Mickle Delivers the Goods (Again), Rocks @FantasiaFest 2014

Sam Shepard, Michael C. Hall & Don Johnson - Vigilantes? Executioners!

Jim Mickle's COLD IN JULY

Cold in July (2014) ****
Dir. Jim Mickle / Script: Nick Damici & Mickle
Starring: Michael C. Hall, Sam Shepard, Don Johnson, Vinessa Shaw, Nick Damici

Review By Greg Klymkiw

Dane (Michael C. Hall) is late for the interment ceremony. A preacher has just finished reading words over the body in a cheap wooden box and two gravediggers are already piling dirt into the maw of the six-foot-deep open cavity in the earth where the young man Dane has killed will lay for eternity. The Sheriff (co-writer Nick Damici) has assured Dane that all is well - it's an open and shut case of self-defence. After all, we're in the great state of Texas, where a man's home is his castle, where he shall protect it and his family against anyone who dares creep into his sleepy suburban abode in the middle of the night. Still, Dane feels the weight of his actions. While his little boy slept soundly and his wife silently padded into the living room, Dane squeezed off one well placed shot into an intruder's skull, spraying globs of brain and geysers of blood all over the wall and chesterfield. Still haunted by images of cleaning the remnants of someone who was once a living, breathing human being and now reduced to a squeegee sponge of blood and gooey pulp being squirted and splashed into the toilet bowl, guilt has sunk its teeth into Dane's very soul, like some pit bull from the depths of hell, with jaws to match. He knows now his life has changed forever.

Dane hasn't even had time to get out of his station wagon when he arrives at the cemetery. Then again, nobody would ever know he's been the lone witness to the tail-end of the burial. No one, that is, save for Russell (Sam Shepard), the lanky, grizzled and grimacing old man with a grey buzz cut atop his dome and a pair of shades he's removed to reveal his piercing eyes. The old man, seemingly appearing from nowhere, towers above Dane, dwarfed only by the big, old Texas sky. He leans into the open window, burning holes into the killer of his only son.

"Come to watch the shit go into the hole, huh?" quips Russell with a half smile. "Mighty Christian of you."

Dane struggles for words, knowing that whatever he says won't make the old man feel any better.

"That sure was a nice picture of your family in the newspaper," says Russell with a smile so warm, it's sinister. He dons his shades again. That huge orb of Texas sunshine's mighty powerful. "Your little boy," he continues, "He sure looks a lot like you."

Dane's face is frozen.

"Y'all have a nice day, now." And the old man strides away, old, but resolute and powerful.

We've all seen J. Lee Thompson's Cape Fear and while Sam Shepard is no Robert Mitchum (who in Hell could be?), one surely wouldn't want to be on this sonofabitch's shit list, either. As Russell, Sam Shepard is plenty scary.

Cold in July plays out in a tense, low key manner that at first seems similar to the classic 1962 revenge thriller, albeit with a dose or two of lithium, but all comparisons to Thompson's picture soon flake off like so much old paint on an abandoned farmhouse in some Texas dustbowl. The narrative transformation is, of course rooted in the striking screenplay adaptation of Joe R. Lonsdale's 80s pulp novel. Written by longtime creative partners Jim Mickle (the film's director) and Nick Damici (brilliantly playing the smarmy, corrupt local sheriff), the gorgeously crafted script takes us on a tortuously serpentine path of shocks and ever-mounting blasts of violence that keep our tiny hairs bristled, our mouths ever-agape and our jaws thudding ever-lower to the floor. And don't be fooled by the few loose ends that might plague you, but only after you've finished watching the film - they're as much a part of the intentional dives into straight-faced ambiguity as they are part of the strange social, political and cultural backdrop.

Lansdale's novel was borne out of the raging Rompin' Ronnie Reagan-omics. Add to this the Texas setting, a state overflowing with massive longhorn cattle, big old American gas-pig Mustangs, station wagons, mighty half-tons plus a gun culture wherein the right to bear arms was lightyears ahead of states that already had extremely liberal National Rifle Association (NRA)-approved attitudes to brandishing such weaponry to begin with. Here, we just plain gots are-seffs sum purty choice material ripe for Mickle-Damici's cinematic ropin' and'a ridin'. Their film is savagely funny, full of surprises and yup, just plain savage.

Shepard isn't the only scary-ass dude in this movie. Don Johnson as, get this, Jim-Bob, gets to yuck it up as a good ol' boy galut. He's a part-time pig farmer with the most behemoth-like porkers this side of Hog Heaven (and generous slabs of superbly white-fat-marbled bacon in his breakfast frying pan) and a part-time private dick with the shadiest connections imaginable. Jim-Bob boasts an arsenal of truly magnificent weaponry, a killer instinct to go along with his killer smile and one knee-slappin' sense of gallows humour. Plus, he's what you might call, in the parlance of white trash everywhere, good people.

The performance that never ceases to take one by surprise is Dexter-star Michael C. Hall. Shucking his persona from that annoyingly overrated series, Hall looks super-sexy-ugly, complete with a horrendous mullet and thick cop-moustache, Hall renders the mild-mannered picture-framing small business owner with a brilliant, underplayed hand which slowly and creepily mounts into that of a hardened killer - on the right side of the law, that is = or rather, whatever side of the law in the pulpy amoral world the film inhabits, that's less wrong than the other.

The trio of Shepard, Hall and Johnson become a perverse Texas version of The Three Musketeers fighting for love and country (in the sickest manner imaginable). At one point, the recently-released jailbird's son is disparagingly identified as "shit that don't fall too far from the tree", but as the lad has gone so far beyond even Dad's pale, Shepard himself remarks: "Whaddya do with a dog that keeps biting people? You either keep it on a chain or shoot it."

Shepard and Johnson play old buddies from Korea and they're both enveloped with a post-war ennui that lead them to take very different roads, at least on the surface. Deep down, though, it's a well-worn path they both share. Hall, of course, is mild mannered, but he is a product of gun culture and the almost-separatist Lone Star State DNA-hard-wiring of individualism that firmly delivers a sense of what's right, what's wrong and as such, doing right at all costs. It's the fluid of life-force that courses through his veins like a river wild. Though his character would have been too young to serve in Vietnam, he'd have grown up believing that it was a just and noble war. Add post-Cold War and Reagan-omics to his persona and he's prime material for bloodlust. Even though his first taste of blood renders him virtually immobile, it's ultimately the thing that leads his need, like a carrot on a stick, to see justice through - Texas-style, of course.

A warning: PLEASE be careful not to read much more than this about the movie before you see it. After my first helping, I scoured a variety of items and discovered WAY TOO MUCH INFORMATION!!! What in the hell is wrong with critics, puff-piece-scribes and flacks? Are they completely out to fucking lunch? Well, for my part, I saw the movie in a plumb virginal state - I even picked up a copy of the book, but didn't read it until afterwards. With that in mind, it would be unfair to reveal too many of the eye-popping, though perfectly natural twists in the story, but let's just say that the criminal element revealed is so appalling that we need to pinch ourselves to assure us we're not dreaming. One of the more grotesque elements that's revealed is the whole notion of organized crime in Texas. Johnson refers to it as "Dixie Mafia. Put "Dixie" and "Mafia" together in the same breath and you've got more scary-ass shit than you've bargained for. Even worse, however, are some of the activities the trio discover on a videocassette labelled "Batting Practice". Believe me, you just don't want to know. Well, at least until you see it to believe it and then, you really don't want to know.

Jim Mickle is a director who continues to dazzle. I hope he keeps making films with the same intelligence, prowess and independent spirit he's brought to bear on this film as well as his previously fine work Mulberry Street, Stake Land and We Are What We Are. I can't imagine the studios not wanting Mickle, nor can I imagine he doesn't want to make studio pictures either. He would benefit from their resources and we'd all benefit from his being able to keep growing, but he needs to remain resolutely his own man - so here's to the system not fucking him with an unwanted kiester-slam.

Cold in July is pure, deliciously vicious pulp fiction. It's as compulsive and propulsive as storytelling at its finest should be and it's marked with a tone and style that bears a unique, individual voice. There's no tongue-in-cheek, no cinema-referential indulgences and best of all, it remains true to its foul roots. There's a purity and cleanliness here that is absolutely and marvellously mired in filth, and we're all the better for it.

Cold in July played at the 2014 FantAsia International Film Festival, It's been released by IFC in the USA and by Mongrel Media in Canada.

THE BEST OFFER - Review By Greg Klymkiw - Festival Preview Review for the inaugural Niagara Integrated Film Festival 2014 (NIFF 2014) from the visionary producer and legendary co-founder and the first-ever Director of the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF), Mr. Bill Marshall

The Niagara Integrated Film Festival launches its first exciting season June 19-22, 2014 inclusive. You're probably wondering about the "integration" aspect of this cultural event and I can assure you it has nothing to do with President Lyndon Johnson's 1964 Civil Rights Act. No Gene Hackman and Willem Dafoe sporting guns and fedoras to stop Mississippi [from] Burning, no To Kill a Mockingbird Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) show trials, no Virgil Tibbs (Sidney Poitier) coming to town In the Heat of the Night to solve murder with a racist lawman (Rod Steiger), no Melvin Van Peebles singing that Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song and most certainly, no William Shatner, The Intruder, heading to Wine Country to preach against desegregation. No-siree, Bobski! We're talking all about the integration of fine cinema, fine dining and the finest wine from the luscious grapes of Southern Ontario, all finely mushed together by the skillful prowess of only the finest bare feet a-stomping on the sweet orbs of fruity delights in those healthy receptacles designed to yield the nectar of the Gods. This is going to be one unique film festival and I've had a chance to preview a few of the cinematic morsels on view this coming weekend. The Film Corner reviews of NIFF's bevy of cinematographic delights right here and now.

Hey kids! Let's ALL line up
for a Geoffrey Rush sex scene.
IT'S NUTRICIOUS & DELICIOUS!

The Best Offer (2013) ***
Dir. Giuseppe Tornatore
Starring: Geoffrey Rush, Sylvia Hoeks, Donald Sutherland, Jim Sturgess, Kiruna Stamell

Review By Greg Klymkiw

He gave us Cinema Paradiso, the bonafide masterpiece and loving ode to movies and he's reigned as one of Italy's most prolific, though not always on-the-mark directors. With The Best Offer, Giuseppe Tornatore delivers a sumptuously crafted romance infused with elements of mystery and the high-toned trappings of filthy rich people and settings that offer the sort of pleasures only movies can bring to us plebeians.

Herein this cinematic eye-candy, Geoffrey Rush plays a lone-wolf art/antique expert and celebrated auctioneer who jets all over the world to appraise private collections of disgustingly affluent upper-class scum. His greatest joy is privately collecting priceless portraits by working with a bearded beard (Donald Sutherland) who attends auctions to bid and win works that Rush prices far too below their real value. It's how the rich get richer and stay rich. They're essentially criminals at heart, but when they're played by Geoffrey Rush, we kind of look the other way so long as they're not overtly exploiting the downtrodden.

When Rush agrees to assess the collection of a mysterious young heiress (Sylvia Hoeks), locked away Miss Havisham-like in a massive villa, he's delighted with the woman's offerings within her crumbling manse, but taken aback that she refuses to meet with him in person. He only does business with people he can lay eyes upon. Our girl, hidden behind the walls of her secret room, proves however, to be quite the conversationalist and when our auctioneer snatches a few peeks of her lithe form she's also quite the catch for a stinky old art connoisseur, a definite babe.

Needless to say and in spite of her agoraphobia, the classy, erudite Mr. Rush manages to charm the panties off shy little missy and she eagerly opens up her private boudoir to him. Soon our smelly, old, but oh-so rapturously seductive gentleman is not only plumbing the depths of her very soul, but plumbing her, uh, plumbing (so to speak).

One of the cooler elements of the tale is how a handsome, young restoration expert (Jim Sturgess) side-coaches Rush to orgasmic bliss, performing a kind of Cyrano de Bergerac role, though in reverse, obviously, since Rush is a smelly, old coot endowed with a semi-prominent proboscis and dreamboat Sturgess has his fair share of babe-o-licious ladies drooling over him.

Even cooler, though, is the subplot involving Rush finding scattered pieces of what appears to be the inner-workings of a centuries-old automaton and Sturgess excitedly rebuilding it. This actually might be the coolest idea I've seen in a movie in some time - I almost perversely wish it could have been devoted to an entire movie instead of the one Tornatore gives us. Well, we're stuck with this one and it's pretty darn good with two exceptions.

The first drag is that the first hour of the film is supremely entertaining. No two ways about it. That's not the problem, though. What is, is that the careful viewer will pick up on pretty obvious hints as to where the narrative is going and said careful viewers will, like I did, want to beg Tornatore not to go there. Alas, he does. It's not only the obvious direction for the film to go, but as such, is an almost-hard-to-swallow denouement that hardly delivers on the promise of the first half.

The second drag might be my own peccadillo, but is there anyone on the face of God's Green Earth who wants to see Geoffrey Rush naked and having sex? Sure, if he's playing a sicko like the Marquis de Sade, I'm there, but somehow, in a mystery-drenched romance a la Daphne Du Maurier, there's something vaguely upchuck-inducing about oldster carnal shenanigans (unless one's imbued with that fetish, and if so, knock yourself out). Three years ago, Rush starred in a dreadful Australian picture called The Eye of the Storm. When I reviewed it, I noted that one of the picture's more sickening subplots involved Geoffrey Rush having his knob plunged and polished by a comely young thing who seemed genuinely charmed by him. It's more of the same here, only this is a good movie that really needed a far more chaste approach to Rush achieving orgasms.

I know what you're thinking: The laddie doth protest too much. Indeed, perhaps, he does, but some things are worth protesting, mais non?

The Best Offer screens on the opening night of NIFF. For further info, visit the festival website HERE. The movie is worth seeing on a big screen, but it will also soon be available on DVD via Mongrel Media. Feel free to order the film from the Amazon links below and, in so doing, support the ongoing maintenance of The Film Corner.